Right ingredients, but the pot boils too slowly

FOR her first novel, communications expert Terry Prone has written a great doorstop of a book that falls firmly into the mass market fiction category. Her characters and basic themes will be familiar to fans of the genre - take two women, one plain and sassy, one - beautiful and smart, add in some transatlantic travel, a little sex, a mysterious stranger and some ambitious career building and you have the solid basis for a blockbuster.

Darcy and Sophia are twins, a doctor's daughters from Dublin's Northside who not only look very different from each other but are temperamentally so far apart that their teenage years are fraught with arguments. Sophia goes to college and gets married, Darcy - gets a job and is posted abroad. Both spend their twenties building their careers, Sophia in PR, Darcy in some sort of sales management, and when they have matured and learnt to cope with each other's differences, they come together to form a communications and PR company that becomes a force in Irish business and political circles.

Other characters include the girls' parents, Sophia's husband, and an American academic. For some colour there is a talking mynah bird whose favourite expression is "who's a wall eyed wanker?" - which should indicate that parts of this book might not be suitable for a reader of a more genteel disposition.

Anyone curious about PR or media handling will be interested in Sophia and her career. Several examples are given to show just how much a communications whiz this attractive and ambitious young woman is. We learn how she can't be bought or manipulated, how clever she is at thinking up creative solutions to communications problems and how savvy she is when it comes to business.

Some image building theories are spelt out, which are enlightening, given the author's profession. Citing politicians as a prime example, Darcy says: Every seven years you have to reinvent yourself. Image obsolescence in people happens because they think the first image they have is the defining one."

Tall, red haired Darcy may be fat but she's fabulous - carving out a career in a multinational company that takes her to work in America where she becomes an ace trouble shooter. The twins' often fraught relationship is credibly drawn, as is their emotional development. Equally, the girls' changing relationship with their mild mannered parents is well depicted - the poignant transition from the cared for child to the carer of the sick parent is evocatively and sensitively handled. Another of the book's strengths is its strong sense of place, particularly in the scenes set in Dublin.

A great deal of time and space is spent building up a clear picture of the characters of the two women but it is done through devices that lack any subtlety: Sophia keeps a very dull, pedantic diary, while Darcy takes part in an improbable research project which involves her writing letters over a number of years about "her life, sex, lies and relationship development" to a young American psychology student - no prizes for guessing the outcome of this long distance correspondence. It is through these mostly long and tedious letters that we find out about Darcy's life and her inner most thoughts as she grows up.

As a device the letters and diary entries slow the book considerably. In Darcy's correspondence particularly, too much explained is and spelt out in dull detail. For example, when the pen pals change from posting their letters to e mailing them, we get a page long potted history of the Internet. Unfortunately the concentration on character development is very much at the expense of the rather thin plot, and in mass market fiction it is strong plots that make for real page turners.

It's worth mentioning that this is a very good looking, well produced book -all credit to its Irish publishers, Marino.